Will you buy bulk commons and uncommons, then?
I’ll have to check around the house, I know I have some. I think when I started playing Ice Age had just come out. Skeletons with snow-covered swampwalk don’t do a whole lot right now. I know I have some nice uncommon and rares:
Swords to Plowshares
Balance
Armageddon (Playing that made me the first target for the next 5 games I played with that group, but it was worth it)
Goblin Recruiter (a few)
City of Brass
I’ll check around
Oops - you’re right! It’s actually the 1996 “Pro Tour Collector Set Inaugural Edition”. I got it in a huge lot of cards and it’s been sitting in the back of my closet for a year or so.
I also have an entire set of “Unglued”, but I doubt that’s worth anything.
Enderw24, I’ll PM you the details of the Pro Tour set.
Yes I will. I prefer whole collections, but cards are cards. I’ve found some unique ways of repackaging them and selling them off to newer players looking for some variety packs. I’m not going to go wild and splurge on 100,000 cards so let me know what number you’re looking at and we can make a deal.
I’ll send you everything I have if you just pay me for the shipping. You don’t even have to pay me for the cards. I’ve been wanting to get them off my hands, anyway.
I’ll check tonight and see if I can figure out what I have.
I don’t know how in the world I can say no to that. Thanks! I’ll PM you
I played from Ice-Age to Apocalypse pretty heavy and dabbled for a few years after that. Sadly I’m in Japan while my cards are still in America…I’ll keep your offer in mind for the future.
Now if you happened to play Yu-gi-oh, we’d be in business 
Out of curiosity, are there circa 1994 cards that are worth something that breaks a buck?
What are they and what are the chances that I’m in possession of one?
Circa 1994 - if you somehow have unopened packs from those days, you’re looking at a pretty good amount of money. Even if not, there are a number of rare and uncommon cards that could be worth a fair deal, either from the main sets (either Unlimited (December 93) or Revised (April 94)) that would have been in the stores at the time, or from the expansion sets (Arabian Nights (especially) and Antiquities).
I think most of mine are Revised and “The Dark.” A friend gave me a few Arabian Nights and Antiquities, just to have so I don’t think they are valuable.
Anything I should look for? Rare ones aren’t exactly labeled as such.
BTW, I hardly played at all. These cards probably qualify as mint.
I’ll check to see if I have any unopened packages. At least I know, not to open them if I find one.
I’ve been out of the game long enough I don’t really know what still has value; I’m sure others will be able to fill in better. I don’t recall there being any killer cards from the Dark, so those cards’ value would be strictly from collectibility, about which I know zero; from the Revised set look for multilands (lands that are both a forest and a mountain, or whatever), Sol Ring, Demonic Tutor, Fork, Balance, and probably some others that I’m forgetting about. Multilands, Fork, and Balance are rares; Sol Ring and Demonic Tutor are uncommons.
All Arabian Nights cards are valuable to some extent.
Revised dual lands (Volcanic Island, Bayou, etc) are valuable and worth $25-80 each. There are a few other valuable ones, but not very many.
Few cards from Antiquities or The Dark are valuable.
Thanks.
I love the dual land cards. I found them much more interesting. I know I have at least a couple.
I know I have a couple Sol Ring.
Demonic Tutor at least sounds familiar, but I have no idea if I have one. It’s like a treasure hunt! Now I just have to remember to look through the cards while I’m actually at home.
I remember Swords to Plowshares too. I have that one :D.
http://sales.starcitygames.com/search.php?substring=Bayou&auto=Y Bayou is going to get you a big stack of bills. Beta Demonic is 60ish.
If you have antiquities look out for Mishra’s workshop
If you have arabians look out for Bazarr of Bagdad, library of alexandria, diamond valley, juzzam etc.
If you have alliances look out for force of will.
If you have legends many of the non creature rares are worth a fair bit.
If you have the Dark…Well, geez. I don’t know.
Any unlimited/beta/alpha has a premium on it.
This search shows all the > 50 dollar cards in the early sets except a/b/u, because most every card worth playing from a\b\u costs a fortune. even vanilla land.
I definitely have cases of old (opened) MtG cards that are sitting around doing nothing much. Through 4th Edition. A lot of cards from The Dark, Ice Age, FE and whatnot. Used to have a full sets of 3E, 4E and The Dark but my binders got damanged in a basement flood so they’re of no use any more, but also have lots of old decks featuring dual lands, Sol Rings, Demonic Tutors, Balance, Stasis, Counterspell, etc., which I understand are not part of the standard rotation any more.
Of course most of them are Commons and may not be worth the cost of shipping… Where are you located, anyway? (ZIP code is fine for estimation)
Honestly, I’ve found that cards can be placed in one of four categories:
Old school: Cards from way back when. For the most part they’re collectible as they’re in demand. Even the ones that normally wouldn’t garner that much attention tend to here just because they’re black bordered. There can still be crap worthless cards, but there’s a higher proportion of good or even amazingly valuable cards.
Standard: These are the latest cards. They’ve come out in the last two years’ worth of cycles and are really hot right now because everyone’s playing with them. But each year that goes by brings another year’s worth of cards rotating out of standard.
Staples: These are cards that have rotated out of standard but manage to maintain their value because they either find their place in another type of tournament deck or still have high demand in fun decks you play with your friends. Usually half a dozen cards from a set of 300 manage to make the jump from standard to staple and retain their value.
Everything else: These are cards, hot cards, not hot cards, whatever, that have rotated out of current sets and just fall off the face of the planet. No one plays with them in tournament decks anymore. Or there are better cards that have been printed in the years after they came out that they’re irrelevant. What it means is that someone’s collection becomes, for all intents and purposes…well, bulk. And this is such a hard concept for people to understand. How can cards I purchased 10 years ago for $300 not be worth $300 now? Are you telling me that awesome card for $25 when I was playing can’t be given away now? Yes. It sucks but yes.
Any interest in Mythos (a relatively short-lived, HP Lovecraft based CCG from the late 1990s)? I have or had a couple of boxes of those cards, several still shrink wrapped and unopened I think.
There are generally two dimensions of pricing for M:tG cards. Playablity, and rarity. Cards which were highly playable and in hot decks, both current and yesteryear, are valuable because people want to play with them. People will do things like overlook things like gold borders, black backs, foreign languages, etc. if that’s what it takes to get a hot card. Even commons can become good sellers if they’re a good card(Lightning Bolt, Disenchant, Maze of Ith, etc)
The very early days of Magic included a time when Wizards of the Coast published info on the size of print runs. So we know there are only a certain number of some cards out there. The introduction of premium(foil) cards added a new set of rare(in the number-printed sense) cards which make them desirable. The old cards are pretty much the ones which have the edge here, with the average card from an old expansion having more value than today’s foil cards.
The zenith of value is occupied by the cards which score high on both scales(for normal cards). The real zenith of prices for Magic cards comes with the ultra-rare cards like Proposal, the 1996 World Champion, or the Blue Hurricane.
There is another scale, which is a prestige-based scale. It’s not factored into the normal prices of everyday cards, but is almost like a whole different market. It’s not really separate though because it can add a premium to other prices. A Bird of Paradise is very playable, but not very rare(they’ve been in print pretty much continuously since the start of the game) but they command higher prices than most similarly playable cards. Part of the reason is because you can play with the older versions and get prestige from having older cards even though an identical card is currently in print. This is why even the basic land from Beta is expensive. It’s playable, but technically probably less rare than modern Mythic Rares, nothing explains the price boost until you factor in the prestige factor.
Enjoy,
Steven
Yeah, $0.01 per card is actually quite generous.
I regularly sell off my bulk commons and uncommons from drafts for $3-4/thousand. There are a lot of magic cards out there, and while some are worth a lot, most are worth basically nothing.
I’m in KCMO. 64137 to be specific.